Strasbourg 2004Thessaloniki, Szczecin 2005

Curator: Magdalena Lewoc

The exhibition Anna, Maria, Magdalena presents the photo based works of six Polish artists of different generations. The main body of the exhibition is formed by the artists who entered the art scene in the second half of the 90s. The common denominator of their artistic practices is the critical approach to things inspiring them.Anna, Maria, Magdalena is a visual tale about a woman and her position/image within the sphere of culture based on a creative, personal dialogue with the surrounding environment in its socio-cultural, political and spiritual dimension.

The body as the main point of reference in the process of self-researching in the works of the invited artists: Monika Wiechowska, Marta Deskur, Bogna Burska, Agata Zbylut, Monika Matraszek and Hanna Nowicka lets them in many parallel ways to play with the cultural patterns and to show their contradictory and ambivalent nature.The subversive potential of the selected works is revealed in many different ways.In a full acceptance of carnality and free from social limitations intimacy as in the works of Monika Wiechowska based on the iconographic clichés derived from the old masterpieces.

In the critical dialogue with the mechanisms of language and the way the subject expresses itself via the images as in the conceptual and formally restricted works of Monika M. Matraszek. In openly gender-focused realisations of Agata Zbylut continuing the ongoing discussion on the female bodythe female identity. In the works of Marta Deskur deeply rooted in the spiritual catholic imagery and posing fundamental questions in the formally purified, dense and multilayered compositions.In the photo series of Bogna Burska working on a tricky connection in between ethics and aesthetics in her visually hyper-attractive fotograms transferring scenes of violence into a domain of beauty.

Magdalena LewocCurator, Contemporary Art Gallery of the National Museum in Szczecin and editor of Mare Articum Baltic Art Magazine